Formally educated in the UK from primary school through to university, Stephanos holds a background in business administration. Though his academic path was rooted in business, he was raised in a multigenerational family of engineers, builders, and entrepreneurs—where infrastructure, systems thinking, and executional excellence were part of daily life. His education abroad sharpened his understanding of structured planning, commercial operations, and scalable delivery—skills he later brought home.
In 1998, after completing his education, Stephanos returned permanently to Nigeria, stepping fully into the family legacy and its long-standing commitment to nation-building.
He has led Hydro Construction & Engineering Co. Ltd. since 2002—a company originally founded by his late father in 1980 in Nigeria, delivering major urban water infrastructure projects that today serve over 10 million people. Clients have included the World Bank, Shell, Nestlé, Cadbury, Mobil, and the U.S. Embassy. In 1990, the family extended their operations into East Africa with the founding of Hydro Ethiopia, which remains active and family-managed.
Stephanos is a fourth-generation African of Greek-Ethiopian descent, born into a family whose journey began in the early 1900s when his great-grandparents bravely immigrated to Ethiopia to support the construction of the Ethio–Djibouti Railway, which reached Dire Dawa in 1902. His father was born in Dire Dawa in 1947, and his grandmother was of Ethiopian heritage—a cultural lineage still reflected today across his wider family, including cousins with mixed Greek, Ethiopian, and Nigerian backgrounds.
After decades in Ethiopia, the family chose to settle in Nigeria, continuing a proud generational evolution from trading, to petroleum, to water, and now power infrastructure. With over 40 years of personal connection to Nigeria, Stephanos has built trusted relationships across the country’s engineering and public sector landscape—particularly with the Transmission Company of Nigeria (TCN), where he continues to support efforts to improve grid efficiency and local content outcomes.
With one foot grounded in heritage and the other in innovation, Stephanos continues to champion scalable infrastructure solutions—carrying forward the same bold, visionary spirit that first brought his family to Africa more than a century ago.